


The Way the World Ends

by randomlyimagine



Category: Black Widow (Comics), Marvel (Comics), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Assassination, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Badass SHIELD Agents, Gen, SHIELD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-21
Updated: 2014-08-21
Packaged: 2018-02-14 02:08:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 547
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2174025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/randomlyimagine/pseuds/randomlyimagine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper,”</i> reads the engraved plaque hanging on the wall behind the man’s desk, background as dark as onyx. It is, Natasha thinks, rather appropriate; she might laugh, if this were an appropriate time and laughter was a habit of hers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Way the World Ends

**Author's Note:**

> Black Widow's current run of comics is great (particularly the art style), but whenever I read them, it makes me sad about how the Natasha Romanoff in the MCU doesn't quite feel like my Natasha. That feeling prompted this piece, which could exist in either the MCU or the comics. That said, it does feature Maria Hill as Director of SHIELD, because she and Black Widow are awesome together.

_“This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper,”_ reads the engraved plaque hanging on the wall behind the man’s desk, background as dark as onyx. It is, Natasha thinks, rather appropriate; she might laugh, if this were an appropriate time and laughter was a habit of hers. As it is, no one else will ever know how amusing she finds the quote’s placement, right behind the working place of a corrupt “businessman” who will go out the exact same way: quickly, silently, with not enough time for any sound to escape his mouth, only the soft thud of his head on the mahogany wood of his desk.

It will, Natasha decides, suffice as a symbolic whimper, if not a literal one.

He hasn’t seen her, hasn’t heard her silent breathing, hasn’t sensed her at all, lurking in the shadows of the coat closet in the corner behind his desk. And he won’t. Her time web-spinning has paid off, and now her victim has no hope of escape. Slowly, she edges the door open. It swings outward silently, on hinges she had oiled earlier for this exact moment. The crack faces the wall, away from him, so she has to open the door enough to bend the right half of her body through the opening, sizing up her prey, before she levels her gun and takes aim at the bald head five feet in front of her.

She pulls the trigger.

The man slumps forward, dead before he can register either the harsh crack of the gun or his own pain, much less make a noise. His head hits the table with a muted thud. Just like she predicted. And just like that, his world is over.

“Target eliminated,” she speaks into her radio as she moves towards his desk and starts rummaging through drawers. Her intel suggests that the man’s files, the copies of his “business” transactions, are somewhere in his office.

Well. His former office, anyway.

Now, it might as well belong to her—the three weeks of preparation required to learn the security systems, learn the family’s schedule, ingratiate herself with the staff has all paid off. With her target dead, she can accomplish her secondary objective: research on the arms smuggling ring he had headed. The papers should be here, according to her intel, and since intel is something essential to all spies, it is something that Natasha has become very, very good at gathering. _._ And when she finds the papers—well. There will be a couple more bullets for a couple more murderers.

“Copy that,” Director Hills answers after a burst of static and a slight delay.

“Any movement around the premises?” Natasha asks.

"Still nothing," Hill responds, her voice sure as she sits in SHIELD's outpost and stares at the video feeds Natasha set up on her way into her target's office. "And the target’s family isn’t due home from the opera for three hours. Since you took the wait staff out of the picture, you’re all alone in there.”

Natasha grins. It is predatory and controlled; as cold and as harsh as the Siberian winter. “Just the way I like it.”


End file.
